The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (376 page)

If you doubt this genetic inclination, recollect the barbells of abuse and mockery he has had to carry away cheerfully to some dump of the soul, without apparent guilt, wrath, or dismay. He has grinned the more and become a self-mocking monolith prince, a pal of the Bushes, and a Kennedy by marriage (to Maria Shriver). He
can
walk through walls. Suppose Ross Perot picked him as Secretary for Drills and Exercise? And wonder if, for all the bonhomie, there isn’t yet a seed of revenge—a seed as revolutionary as those Jack got for his cow.

Legend has it that he was a frail child—or you can believe that he was found fully formed (with agent) in a mountain cave in the Alps. All you have to do is believe something. Nights in the gym led him to contests and titles: he was Junior Mr. Europe, Mr. World, a five-time Mr. Universe, and seven-time Mr. Olympia. That phase of his life is amusingly revealed in the documentary
Pumping Iron
(77, George Butler and Robert Fiore), derived from the book by Butler and novelist Charles Gaines. It was Gaines, screenwriter on
Stay Hungry
, who helped get Arnold into real pictures. Before then, he had appeared (as Arnold Strong) in
Hercules in New York
(70, Arthur Allan Seidelman), and he was a bodyguard for Mark Rydell in
The Long Goodbye
(73, Robert Altman).

He played
The Villain
(79, Hal Needham), and on TV he was Mickey Hargitay for Loni Anderson in
The Jayne Mansfield Story
(80, Dick Lowry). His breakthrough was the fatuous but violent and very successful
Conan the Barbarian
(82, John Milius), followed by the atrocious
Conan the Destroyer
(84, Richard Fleischer). Then, for the first time, he played a character not born of woman:
The Terminator
(84, James Cameron). With Cameron’s help, he found the humor and even a certain pathos in robotics, and he was a large part of the film’s originality.

There were several ill-considered castings in his new status:
Commando
(85, Mark L. Lester);
Red Sonja
(85, Fleischer);
Raw Deal
(86, John Irvin);
The Running Man
(87, Paul Michael Glaser);
Predator
(87, John McTiernan); and
Red Heat
(88, Walter Hill).

Twins
(88, Ivan Reitman) was another advance, a comedy pairing with Danny DeVito: they played twins who came out wrong in an experiment—again, his birth was beyond the normal.
Total Recall
(90, Paul Verhoeven) also cast him as a being interfered with by science: the picture was expensive, but it was a smash and Arnold got $10 million and 15 percent of the gross.

Kindergarten Cop
(90, Reitman) was over-cute—he was teamed with precocious kids—but kids loved it, and the picture found a gentle clumsiness in Arnold. This vanished in time for
Terminator 2
(91, Cameron), bigger than anything yet. But
The Last Action Hero
(93, McTiernan) was a large, mortifying failure that put many other projects from the same studio on hold.

He has begun to direct, rather in the way of a giant picking up a baby, with great caution and potential for charm: he did an episode for
Tales from the Crypt
(91) and
Christmas in Connecticut
(92) for TNT. But he has been such a learner in the past. What will the world do if, on learning the explanation that anyone born in Graz, Austria, cannot be president, Arnold says, “Why, baby?” Paul Verhoeven once said that this man could be as big as Charlton Heston—which may be Verhoeven’s one recorded instance of naïveté.

In 1994 he made
True Lies
(Cameron) and
Junior
(94, Reitman), a measure of his intriguing wish to be cuddly and tough at the same time—with that dash of something beyond human. Indeed, in an age of more and more androids in movies, Arnold seemed to have a God-given (or Austrian) advantage. He played the kid market again in
Jingle All the Way
(96, Brian Levant) and he was quite funny as Mr. Freeze in
Batman & Robin
(97, Joel Schumacher). But then he faltered: he had a heart condition—alas, it proved he had a heart. He worked much less, and on the strength of
End of Days
(99, Peter Hyams) and
The 6th Day
(00, Roger Spottiswoode), might have done less still.

He recovered, though
Collateral Damage
(02, Andrew Davis) was delayed, and
Terminator 3
(03, Jonathan Mostow) was a serious boxoffice disappointment (as well as a lousy betrayal of the first two
T
pictures). Arnold looked worn, a touch flabby, and high baked. Nothing was left but “real life,” and so Arnold came down like an avenging angel on California’s forlorn Governor Gray Davis. Despite calling the state “Kal-ee-fornya” in every speech, Arnold was elected governor, whereupon he developed a secret sympathy for Davis’s plight and repeated some of his speeches and ploys. It’s not so far removed from the days of Freedonia, but it may turn out less fun.

Where is he going? Will the Republican party ever release him? How long can that terrific look of mechanical success endure insoluble problems?

Paul Scofield
(1922-2008), b. Hurstpierpoint, England
He is perhaps the best example of a truly great stage actor who has never seemed interested in conquering film. Yet he has an Oscar to his credit—for Thomas More in
A Man for All Seasons
(66, Fred Zinnemann)—as well as a fine
King Lear
(71, Peter Brook), and several telling supporting performances. Nevertheless, this book would trade the lot for his two dry, elegant, dreary narrations in two films by Patrick Keiller—
London
(94) and
Robinson in Space
(97). It’s not just that Scofield catches the rhythm of eighteenth-century prose. Just as important, he has the authority and the casual charm for a kind of movie voice that really has no equal. Why, after all, aren’t all movies like Keiller’s, and why shouldn’t the urbane but essentially disinterested Scofield narrate everything, as right and habit?

On the other hand, Scofield has a face that was never quite young or sociable, and a strange bunch of film roles that might have been picked at random: Philip II in
That Lady
(55, Terence Young); with Virginia McKenna in
Carve Her Name with Pride
(58, Lewis Gilbert);
The Train
(64, John Frankenheimer);
Tell Me Lies
(68, Brook); the boss in
Bartleby
(72, Anthony Friedman);
Scorpio
(73, Michael Winner—alas, that one); doing Edward Albee in
A Delicate Balance
(73, Tony Richardson); as Lambert Strether in a BBC TV version of
The Ambassadors
(77, James Cellan Jones); a onetime patient of Freud’s in
1919
(85, Hugh Brody); the King of France in
Henry V
(89, Kenneth Branagh); as a deaf birdwatcher in
When the Whales Came
(89, Clive Rees); the Ghost in
Hamlet
(90, Franco Zeffirelli);
Utz
(92, George Sluzier); superb and elusive as Mark Van Doren in
Quiz Show
(94, Robert Redford); the judge in
The Crucible
(96, Nicholas Hytner); the voice of Boxer in
Animal Farm
(99, John Stephenson).

Martin Scorsese
, b. New York, 1942
1964:
It’s Not Just You, Murray
(s). 1968:
I Call First/Who’s That Knocking at My Door?
. 1972:
Boxcar Bertha
. 1973:
Mean Streets
. 1974:
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Italian-American
(d). 1976:
Taxi Driver
. 1977:
New York, New York
. 1978:
The Last Waltz
(d);
American Boy
(d). 1980:
Raging Bull
. 1983:
The King of Comedy
. 1985:
After Hours
. 1986:
The Color of Money
. 1988:
The Last Temptation of Christ
. 1989: an episode from
New York Stories
. 1990:
Goodfellas
. 1991:
Cape Fear
. 1993:
The Age of Innocence
. 1995:
Casino; A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
(d). 1997:
Kundun
. 1999:
Il Mio Viaggio in Italia/My Voyage to Italy
(d);
Bringing Out the Dead
. 2002:
Gangs of New York
. 2004:
The Aviator
. 2006:
The Departed
. 2008:
Shine a Light
(d). 2010:
Shutter Island
.

For years now, those who cherish the tradition and the prospect of American filmmaking have talked of Scorsese as “our best.” He is a self-declared movie fanatic, a collector, a man devoted to film preservation and to celebrating careers like that of Michael Powell. He likes to play small parts in films, so great is his appetite, and he has been a friendly enabler or executive producer lately for a number of films—notably
The Grifters
(90, Stephen Frears).

Yet all is not well. One might as well start with
Raging Bull
, which is often hailed as his best film, and one of the greatest ever made. It is beautiful in ways that make beauty the first thing one notices—by that I mean not just its loyalty to black and white, but its insistence on form and emotional design being more important than the facts of boxing. I don’t think Scorsese knows or cares much about boxing. That means that he is using its ritual for some personal journeying into the heart of savagery. And I am not sure he really knows that savagery either, except as a literary or cinematic context. In other words, amid the spectacle and power of
Raging Bull
I felt artistic will rising far above experience. Much the same thing can be said of
Taxi Driver
. This leaves me suspicious of what the film is about.
Raging Bull
is full of subtexts—not least, fear of women and a fascination with homosexuality. There cannot be space here to examine such things thoroughly. But Scorsese does not get enough proper scrutiny for his ideas. And if he is our best, then his films need ideas and themes more lasting and useful than the romantic fantasies that may have been acquired in a lifetime of watching movies.

The King of Comedy
does have ideas—more than it has digested. Yet I think it showed a Scorsese trying to move in new directions. But the attempt wilted.
After Hours
was a disappointment.
The Color of Money
is slick, opportunistic, and nowhere near as tough-minded as
The Hustler. The Last Temptation of Christ
seemed to me dutiful—as if Scorsese had become trapped in a venture he told everyone he
had
to make.
Goodfellas
had passages of extraordinary danger and fear, and it surely came closer to the mob than most Mafia films. But still Scorsese yearned for these made men, and still it was hard to know why he was making the picture except for the thrill of all those gangster riffs and lines.
Cape Fear
was horrible, unnecessary, and adolescent, no matter that Scorsese was close to fifty. It was Brian De Palma on a good day, yet De Palma without the humor of
Scarface
. And that is not good enough for our best.

Scorsese is the adult version of a delicate, hypersensitive kid who grew up in a rough neighborhood and ever afterwards felt bound to pretend that he was hit man as well as a violinist. He wants it both ways—like all fantasists—even if it does jar a little when his cameo would-be killer in
Taxi Driver
speaks profane poetry, as a way of putting off real revenge. He’s a back-seat director who manages to suggest that the guy upfront (De Niro) is his own surrogate. His end-of-my-tether nervous vitality is dangerously studied and superficial. Scorsese would be more demanding and durable if he wasn’t so chronically aware that his films are part of the sex-and-violence hang-ups of erring Catholics, or that
New York, New York
grew somber as his own marriage broke up. That is the
pathétique des auteurs
.

That sounds snide, but I only hope to see Scorsese recognizing a funnier, theatrical vein in himself. It ill-becomes any movie director to cry the wild song of the streets, much less anyone as successful that young as Scorsese. He is a devotee of intelligence, visual beauty, and verbal style; there is hardly a grain of committed naturalism in him. When he uses the St. Gennaro festival, he is intoxicated with its Sternbergian decor. Language, color, and design are self-sufficient riches in his films. The killings in
Taxi Driver
are a soaring cadenza of space, composition, and editing in which the camera rises finally to a brilliant vantage above a set and its concoction. When Travis shoots Sport it is to topple the house of cards set up by their jive talk. The taxi is yellow not because New York cabs are, not even to add fire and brimstone, but to harmonize with the gasps of white steam and the carbon slick of mean streets.

Taxi Driver
may be hysterical and holocaustic, but it is still a movie in the tradition of Vincente Minnelli, the acknowledged stylist behind
New York, New York
. That influence shows in many ways: the virtuosity of the camera, the bravura of color, the resort to movement, music, and decor as the imprint of feelings, plus a hero as tortured as Van Gogh in
Lust for Life
. But the strongest link with Minnelli is in the reliance on dream.
Taxi Driver
is not an indictment of New York City, no matter how faithfully it was filmed there, no matter how devoutly Scorsese recalls growing up in Little Italy, struggling for air and opportunity.
Taxi Driver
is the work of a man happy with the fervent claustrophobia of film noir, and perhaps inexperienced from spending so many hours at the movies.